I can use the code as is, there is no requirement that I use imagic via PECL.
When I was looking at other posts I saw a few people ask about environment specifics.
You replied while I was preemptively providing that info.

Imagic via PECL is just how I have been doing everything else. Scale, crop, store edited image caches...

I just have to start with PHP to trigger the code you linked to and have it run. But, that I can figure out without too much trouble.